With an eye on the upcoming Assembly elections and in a bid to reassert its identity in the ruling alliance while countering the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), the BJP in Maharashtra has decided to shed its cautious approach on the contentious Maratha quota issue.
The BJP’s core committee believes that its cautious approach on the issue has emboldened the Opposition, which is exploiting the caste-based polarisation to its advantage. “It was reflected in the recent Lok Sabha polls, where our tally fell from 23 in 2019 in the state to nine. The party has now prepared a factsheet to expose the MVA’s lies on the issue,” sources said.
The BJP, through the factsheet, aims to tell the people how the Maratha reservation was upheld by the Bombay High Court during its tenure in 2018, when then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was helming the BJP and undivided Shiv Sena government, and how the Supreme Court scrapped the quota in May 2021 under the MVA tenure. The BJP will seek to pin the blame for this on Uddhav Thackeray, the then CM and the current Sena (UBT) chief, for his “failure to substantiate the community’s backwardness”.
Insiders say this changed approach can also be seen in Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s remarks during his recent visit to Maharashtra commending Fadnavis’s leadership between 2014 and 2019 for effectively tackling the Maratha issue – after senior leaders had voiced concerns over the matter.
During his address at the Pune conclave, Shah said: “The Maratha community has got reservation whenever the BJP is in power. However, the community was deprived of reservation when the Sharad Pawar-led coalition came to power in the state.”
Shah’s pat on the back for Fadnavis was noteworthy as those agitating for the Maratha quota, especially activist Manoj Jarange-Patil, have painted the Deputy CM as the face of the opposition to it. As a Brahmin leader, he is on weaker ground on the issue as compared to CM Eknath Shinde and fellow Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, both Marathas.
In his address at the conclave, Fadnavis was also belligerent: “I do not want to say anything to Jarange-Patil. However, I want to ask Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray and Nana Patole what their stand is on the Maratha quota issue. Do you support reservation for Marathas under the OBC category?”
Speaking to reporters soon after Shah’s visit, Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrashekar Bawankule said no blame could be attached to the party on the matter. “Why should we go on the defensive? The Opposition is framing us through a fake narrative. We have decided to go hammer and tongs to put forward our stand,” he said.
The BJP and particularly Fadnavis as Home Minister have been on the defensive on the issue since August last year, when a lathicharge on pro-Maratha reservation protesters in Jalna district added fuel to their anger and led to the rise of Jarange-Patil as the face of the protest. Eventually, Fadnavis was forced to publicly apologise to defuse tensions.
The BJP hopes that defusing the Maratha versus OBC polarisation at the village level will help it check the slide as seen in the Lok Sabha elections, ahead of the Assembly polls. The BJP has set a target of winning over 125 of the 288 seats while the Mahayuti aims to win over 200.
In 2014, the BJP had won 122 Assembly seats – its highest ever in the state – while it got 105 in 2019. However, the party had contested both the elections in alliance with the undivided Sena, while now there is a multipolar contest on account of the two Senas as well as the two NCPs.
The BJP’s counter-attack is timed with Jarange-Patil renewing his quota protests, and starting another indefinite hunger strike. He had halted the protests ahead of the Lok Sabha elections after the Shinde government in February granted 10% reservation to Marathas in jobs and education through the Socially and Educationally Backward Class (SEBC) Act.
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